If you’re familiar with electric vehicles, you’ll know two things about their relationship with fire: One, that they’re far less likely than gasoline-powered cars to catch fire; and two, they’re also much harder to put out once ablaze. Hmm.
This poses a problem for underground and multistory carparks: How do you stop the electric car from acting like a match in a hay barn when a fire engine can’t get to it?
Well, a British company thinks it has the answer. Enter Prospeed Motorsport, which has built the (count ’em) six-wheeled Hiload ‘rapid intervention vehicle’ you see here.
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It’s based on the indestructible Toyota Hilux pickup, only the chassis has been replaced to avoid the ‘cut and shut’ of the donor car, and a torque-splitter system has been added for good measure.
The gross vehicle weight climbs to 5,600kg and results in a payload just shy of three tons, but crucially, the height stands at 1,850mm—low enough to access height-restricted carparks that normal trucks would simply shrug at.
The Hiload 6x6 can also be fitted with a ColdCut Cobra system, which uses “an abrasive suspended in water” to pierce through a car’s floor at 4,350psi and get right at an EV's battery. This way it can quell a fire in under 10 minutes using less than a bathtub’s worth of water.
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The company claims this is more effective (and less wasteful) than previous ways of preventing what’s called ‘thermal runaway’ of the cells, included the tried-but-tiresome method of leaving a burning BEV submerged in water for several days.
And by getting crew and water to EV fires as quickly as possible, Prospeed Motorsport reckons the Hiload could prevent major fires that’ve seen thousands of vehicles and entire buildings torched by a single electric car.
So come on, multistory carpark owners. Buy the 6WD Hilux immediately. You know it makes sense.
NOTE: This article first appeared on TopGear.com. Minor edits have been made.
